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Inspiration From MVP Summit 2015

I'm back from the summit and have had a week to digest everything I saw. And now I will share with the top three topics that really stuck with me.

Visual Studio Team Services and ALM

Yeah, I bet you didn't think you'd read about VSO, err..I mean, VS Team Services on my blog, but you are. I'm just as surprised as you are; trust me. Why put this big, bloated piece of software on my list? Because I got to see it working with NodeJS and JVM-based projects and I have to say, what I saw was really impressive.

Sure, it's not perfect. It still lacks SSH support (but it's coming soon) and I'm still not 100% about why work items need to be so customizable, but it really is powerful toolset that starts you off at the right price at $0 for unlimited private repositories, and even some cloud-based build server time. The build tool is pretty cool and supports all kinds of JavaScript and Java-based systems, which really appeals to me.

One of the skills I lack on my resume is a strong understanding of Application Lifecycle Management, or ALM for short. Although I know there are plenty of tools out there, VSTS gives me everything I need for free, with some great tooling.

Did they convince me to look open up my copy of Visual Studio 2015? No. No they didn't. That is staying off, but VSTS is a great stepping stone for me and it might be for you too.

Vorlon.JS is Open Sorcery

No really, it is.

You can triage any client-side JavaScript application from anywhere in the world by simply having the device running the application load up a page on your Vorlon server. Or, if you're looking to triage someone else's work, you can use the Vorlon proxy feature to load up any site and start going through the guts to see how it can be improved.

It's amazing, and I'm not talking more about it until I get to talk about it in depth once I get my hands dirty.

Oh, and did I say that it's open source? 'Cause it is.

JavaScript is Stronger Than Ever

With both ES5 and ES6 out the door, it's time to look to the future of JavaScript and where it will be going with ES7, and that's exactly what we did.